NARRATOR: July 28, 2003.
[sirens blaring]
Police respond to a home in a working class neighborhood.
Inside, they find three bodies, first,
a woman shot execution style in the head.
[dramatic music playing]
Then, her younger son, shot and stabbed in the kitchen.
Finally, her older son, shot in his pajamas, still in bed.
The victims are 43-year-old Karen Chappel and her two sons,
17-year-old Whitney and his younger
brother, 14-year-old Kalin.
You just can't imagine the trauma it is to the survivors.
NARRATOR: At the scene, Nance finds no signs of forced entry.
One of the first observations that I had was that this was
a well-protected home and that the people who
lived inside the home screened who came
in the home very carefully.
I believe that the victims knew the killer
and were comfortable with the killer.
[dramatic music playing]
OK.
What do you-- what do you have?
NARRATOR: Nance gets an important lead
from friends of the victims.
Lorenzo.
Do you know Lorenzo's last name?
We found one of the only people that the family
allowed into the home was Lorenzo Brown.
[dramatic music playing]
NARRATOR: 17-year-old Lorenzo Brown
was best friends with Whitney Chappel
and was considered part of the family.
MIKE NANCE: Looking at Lorenzo's criminal history, he did have--
he did have arrests but nothing of a violent nature.
Where did you see him?
NARRATOR: Nance learns that Lorenzo
was staying at the Chappel house the night of the murder.
That immediately sent up a red flag
that, if he was there during the time that we believe the crime
occurred and he's not there now, why not?
We know-- where is Lorenzo?
We need to talk to Lorenzo?
He's certainly a person of interest
that we need to talk to.
NARRATOR: It's time to bring in the department's
most experienced interrogator.
You know, I'm not a big, tough guy.
I'm just a guy that's not scared to talk to a killer.
NARRATOR: Sergeant Mike Huff has been
in charge of Tulsa Homicide for more than a decade.
While Huff interrogates Lorenzo, Nance observes
from the monitoring room.
MIKE HUFF: OK.
Tell us what happened.
I get a call at my house.
And I hear Whitney saying, do you got the money?
And I tell him, yeah.
NARRATOR: Lorenzo had recently stolen $700 from Whitney.
Now his best friend was demanding it back.
MIKE HUFF: You didn't have the money, did you?
No.
MIKE HUFF: So when you went over there, what was your intention?
If they are accusing me of stealing, I'm gon' have
to-- you know what I'm saying?
Because they think I got the money.
And I told them that I had the money.
So.
MIKE HUFF: When you showed up without the money,
you knew there would be a problem.
A problem.
MIKE NANCE: Lorenzo seemed more animated and more defeated.
And this tells me that he's getting closer to the truth.
It was little petty issues, like why
I'm taking care of his grandpa more than him, why I'm
at his house taking care of his mother
and helping out around the house more than him.
MIKE HUFF: It had just been building up for a while.
Building up and building up.
And he didn't [bleep] at all, whatsoever.
Lorenzo was a young kid who had nothing.
He lived in a very impoverished neighborhood
with an impoverished family.
He had really no means to escape that.
And then he has a friend that has
what he is aspiring to have.
And that may have created some animosity toward his friend.
MIKE HUFF: What happened when you got over there?
I got over there.
And I'm thinking, I don't want to do nothing bad.
Because his mom said, if you ain't got the money,
say it now so we can get it replaced.
And she said, in the morning, we're going to take
you over there to get it.
So.
MIKE HUFF: Did you did you actually lay your head down
that night and get some rest?
Uh, no.
I was too busy up thinking, you know,
how I'm going to get this money.
You know what I'm saying?
If I had to rob something-- you know what I'm saying--
just to pay it back, because I didn't need none of this,
you know.
But it was just too late.
At the same time, it wasn't too late.
I could have just busted out and said, I ain't got it, man.
I ain't got it.
MIKE HUFF: So, what happened?
What made you make this decision?
Because it was getting light outside.
And I knew, when they wake up, they
were going to take me over to my house
and get the money that I said I had.
And I didn't have it.
So--
And I'm like, well, there's going to be a big squabble
or whatever.
And somebody's going to end up getting hurt, anyway.
So I'm thinking, let's just end it now.
[dramatic music playing]
MIKE HUFF: Did you have a handgun with you?
Yeah.
MIKE HUFF: And did you have anything else with you?
I had a knife, a machete.
[dramatic music playing]
MIKE HUFF: OK, then what happened?
I gathered up enough nerve to go up there and just do it,
you know?
MIKE HUFF: What'd you do?
[sighs]
[dramatic music playing]
MIKE HUFF: Then what did you do?
I ran right down the stairs.
And I was thinking, either run out of the house now--
but they know you're here.
So I had to gather up enough nerve to shoot Kalin.
MIKE HUFF: Was he asleep when you went in there?
Yeah.
And I aimed the pistol at him and just turned my head again
and just started shooting.
MIKE HUFF: Do you think you hit?
Yeah.
MIKE HUFF: Then what happened?
He, like, kind of, like, turned
around and looked at me, you know,
and just, like, collapsed.
And he's, like, just was looking at me,
you know what I'm saying?
His mama came out and like, what's going on?
And I said, damn, here she comes.
MIKE HUFF: What did you do then?
I had one bullet left.
And I gave it to her in the head.
[dramatic music playing]
I want to just scream out and say, oh, my god, what
the hell is going on with you?
What-- you know, look what you've done!
It was sickening to me.
I was like, what [bleep] am I doing?
I mean, I'm killing people.
You know what I'm saying?
I couldn't understand it.
When I first came in contact with Lorenzo,
I didn't think he had that level of violence in him
that was going to do all this.
But he totally shifted gears on me.
I was certain that I was sitting in that room
with an evil person.
Anything else that we haven't asked you in this statement
that you'd like to add?
I wish I could just turn it back.
I wish I could--
to the part where he asked me, did I have the money?
MIKE HUFF: I'm sure you do.
I don't know why I said, yeah.
I could have said, no.
And that would have been that.
I'm sorry.
Sometimes that's how life goes, you know?
People-- stuff happens.
Apparently, Lorenzo didn't believe
that they could work it out as good friends and buddies.
And so he had to go to the extremes that he did.
This crime was the ultimate betrayal--
the people that befriended him, that, you know, cared for him,
that, you know, invited him to sleep at their home,
to eat their food, and to care for him.
And he just very methodically executed them.
It's kind of overwhelming.
[dramatic music playing]